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Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

I just remembered the circumstances when "Brian" appeared.
Rillian was supposed to watch over Dominic because his mind nearly collapsed from stress, and that can be very dangerous with seers.

It's lucky Dominic just saw a friend die in front of him, lost a relic that serves as a key to the destruction of the world, witnessed a massive necromantic attack, surrendered himself, got tortured and lost faith in the one magic that is supposed to keep him immune from illusions.
Imagine what would happen if the king told Dominic he's out of candies!

Ways in which Dominic Deegan could be better, #1,802:

Spoiler

Show

Start with the premise of mindbreak. If a sufficiently powerful seer becomes too stressed and overwhelmed for an extended period of time, they suffer mindbreak, which I think we can effectively call a magical Chernobyl, or at least on par with a major earthquake. It's a disaster, and one far-reaching in its destruction. Fine. Let us declare that this is an actual concern, because Mookie isn't writing this, so it won't be immediately forgotten.

Obviously, it is in the best interest of those in power (and those around them) to prevent mindbreak at all costs, since it's bad, bad news. If a king, for example, has a royal seer (and why wouldn't he? In a universe where such people exist, NOT having one would be a major political and strategic weakness), it is in that king's best interest to make very sure that said seer doesn't experience the stress and trauma that eventually leads to mindbreak. We have to assume that mindbreak isn't extremely common, or else it would be happening left and right, but it has to be a nontrivial concern. Every seer knows that mindbreak is real, and while it might only happen to 1% of the seers out there (or even 0.1%), it's still a problem. So, the king wants to make sure that his powerful seers don't get too stressed out or too overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, these are seers. Royal seers. Their jobs aren't to just scry adorable children saying the darnedest things for His Highness's amusement. Their jobs are to foresee disasters. Wars, earthquakes and other natural disasters, villainy from eldritch horrors and unscrupulous sorcerers, epidemic diseases magical and natural, and so on. If a king asks his seer what the likely outcome of invading a nearby country would be, the seer isn't going to just see a history textbook saying "in this year, Country A invaded Country B, expanding their territory but making a political enemy in the process." The seer is going to see bloody battles and destruction, loss of innocent lives, and the unrest that follows, as well as the glorious and politically important parts. That's . . . not easy to deal with on a regular basis. Furthermore, seers often have visions of upcoming important (usually dangerous or at least threatening) events . . . think about the start of every DD arc ever. Even when not instructed to investigate things, seers who care about anything at all are subject to this sort of thing.

These things are stressful. Being a royal seer would be a very stressful job. Your job would be to see horrible things (bidden and unbidden), and then to deal with the political and bureaucratic situation necessary to do something about them. (Remember, Mookie isn't writing this, so royal seers aren't Dominic, and they won't automatically have an answer for everything just because.) If the seer isn't basically also the king (which they aren't in this situation), there's going to be at least a low-level Cassandra complex going on, in which you'd feel like nobody is taking your warnings seriously, and that both makes you look bad and puts your country in danger. You'd also be painfully aware of all the intrigue going on around you . . . all the assassination plots (character and bodily), all the smear campaigns, all the backroom deals, and so on. Being part of that game (you didn't get to be a royal seer for nothing, of course), you wouldn't be able to just expose it all without getting thrown under several buses, but you're aware that nobody really trusts you, because you probably have something on them. You might see their assassins coming, but they're still coming.

The point is, it's a stressful job. Endlessly stressful. There'd be constant background stress, and there'd be spikes of traumatic visions both bidden and unbidden. (Not every vision is going to be a major problem, of course, but enough of them are.) And you know that mindbreak is a real thing. And so does the king.

The king, not being a total idiot (Mookie's not writing), is going to want to insulate you, the royal seer, from any more stress than necessary. But of course, you're a seer. It's very hard to hide things from you. It's extremely hard to lie to you. Any steps taken to make you easier to hide things from are steps that make you less able to do your job and see, for example, the assassins plotting against the king. And if you report that a dragon is about to awaken and rampage through one of your kingdom's smaller cities, and the king assures you that he's sending troops to deal with that even though most of the army is tied up in the war with your neighbor, you're going to know if that doesn't happen. It might be intentional (you DO, presumably, care about the people of your country), it might be unintentional, but there's a good chance that you'll simply know that the king is telling you what you want to hear and not actually fixing problems. On some level, the king knows this too, but he might not always have a choice . . . but that makes it increasingly hard to shield you from mindbreak, which is basically game over, man. Game over!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is called tension. It takes a premise, extrapolates it out for a few logical steps, and causes it to give rise to a fertile breeding ground for conflict. Stories told against this backdrop have many ways of proceeding, and they always have ways of causing conflict and struggle. You might have enemy operatives engaging in the dangerous business of trying to intentionally induce mindbreak in the royal seers of their enemies. You might have a callous and greedy courtier who seeks to use the seer's stress levels as leverage to get what he wants. Whatever! But the point is, you'd have SOMETHING.

And that's a way that some premises laid forth in Dominic Deegan could be used in a better story.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

I think we should ponified Mookie and his equally dumb buddyTim Buckley (though he's redeemable for his Choose Your Own Adventure, gaming strips, and My Little Pony Parody), ala Cutie Mark Crusaders.
P.S- I think "Starpower" project will have grim fate since Mookie lacked the idea of military tactics, shown in zombie arc (codex of tactics showed that ranged at the back, melee up front) and orc (According to Codex of tactics, let your enemy charge up hill). I think we should start codex of tactics for many writers to learn about military tactics.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Originally Posted by Zaq

Ways in which Dominic Deegan could be better, #1,802:

I thought of something a lot simpler, that might even work with the "plot" as it is:
Mindbreak causes a magical explosion. Dangerous, but also a focused magical blast that might be useful to open certain magic doors...

DJ needed a seer to find the door, but more importantly, he needed a seer to be broken right next to it.
DJ's first choice was Celesto, because he figured a half broken seer will take less effort to break. But Dominic just offered himself, so why not prepare him as a backup key?
This also explains why Celesto was kept in the dungeon and not used. Breaking Celesto slowly WAS the way to use him.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Did mookie ever describe HOW a seer going crazy would be bad for anyone but him and his friends? I mean, I could understand an archmage losing control of their magic causing devastation across the land, but his magic is to see things. Aside from purely personal self destruction at losing control of his gift and seeing so much his head explodes, I just dont understand what danger to the world a mind break seer is.

"Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum"
Translation: "Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe."

Originally Posted by Nerd-o-rama

Traab is yelling everything that I'm thinking already.

"If you don't get those cameras out of my face, I'm gonna go 8.6 on the Richter scale with gastric emissions that'll clear this room."

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Originally Posted by Zaq

Ways in which Dominic Deegan could be better, #1,802:

Spoiler

Show

Start with the premise of mindbreak. If a sufficiently powerful seer becomes too stressed and overwhelmed for an extended period of time, they suffer mindbreak, which I think we can effectively call a magical Chernobyl, or at least on par with a major earthquake. It's a disaster, and one far-reaching in its destruction. Fine. Let us declare that this is an actual concern, because Mookie isn't writing this, so it won't be immediately forgotten.

Obviously, it is in the best interest of those in power (and those around them) to prevent mindbreak at all costs, since it's bad, bad news. If a king, for example, has a royal seer (and why wouldn't he? In a universe where such people exist, NOT having one would be a major political and strategic weakness), it is in that king's best interest to make very sure that said seer doesn't experience the stress and trauma that eventually leads to mindbreak. We have to assume that mindbreak isn't extremely common, or else it would be happening left and right, but it has to be a nontrivial concern. Every seer knows that mindbreak is real, and while it might only happen to 1% of the seers out there (or even 0.1%), it's still a problem. So, the king wants to make sure that his powerful seers don't get too stressed out or too overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, these are seers. Royal seers. Their jobs aren't to just scry adorable children saying the darnedest things for His Highness's amusement. Their jobs are to foresee disasters. Wars, earthquakes and other natural disasters, villainy from eldritch horrors and unscrupulous sorcerers, epidemic diseases magical and natural, and so on. If a king asks his seer what the likely outcome of invading a nearby country would be, the seer isn't going to just see a history textbook saying "in this year, Country A invaded Country B, expanding their territory but making a political enemy in the process." The seer is going to see bloody battles and destruction, loss of innocent lives, and the unrest that follows, as well as the glorious and politically important parts. That's . . . not easy to deal with on a regular basis. Furthermore, seers often have visions of upcoming important (usually dangerous or at least threatening) events . . . think about the start of every DD arc ever. Even when not instructed to investigate things, seers who care about anything at all are subject to this sort of thing.

These things are stressful. Being a royal seer would be a very stressful job. Your job would be to see horrible things (bidden and unbidden), and then to deal with the political and bureaucratic situation necessary to do something about them. (Remember, Mookie isn't writing this, so royal seers aren't Dominic, and they won't automatically have an answer for everything just because.) If the seer isn't basically also the king (which they aren't in this situation), there's going to be at least a low-level Cassandra complex going on, in which you'd feel like nobody is taking your warnings seriously, and that both makes you look bad and puts your country in danger. You'd also be painfully aware of all the intrigue going on around you . . . all the assassination plots (character and bodily), all the smear campaigns, all the backroom deals, and so on. Being part of that game (you didn't get to be a royal seer for nothing, of course), you wouldn't be able to just expose it all without getting thrown under several buses, but you're aware that nobody really trusts you, because you probably have something on them. You might see their assassins coming, but they're still coming.

The point is, it's a stressful job. Endlessly stressful. There'd be constant background stress, and there'd be spikes of traumatic visions both bidden and unbidden. (Not every vision is going to be a major problem, of course, but enough of them are.) And you know that mindbreak is a real thing. And so does the king.

The king, not being a total idiot (Mookie's not writing), is going to want to insulate you, the royal seer, from any more stress than necessary. But of course, you're a seer. It's very hard to hide things from you. It's extremely hard to lie to you. Any steps taken to make you easier to hide things from are steps that make you less able to do your job and see, for example, the assassins plotting against the king. And if you report that a dragon is about to awaken and rampage through one of your kingdom's smaller cities, and the king assures you that he's sending troops to deal with that even though most of the army is tied up in the war with your neighbor, you're going to know if that doesn't happen. It might be intentional (you DO, presumably, care about the people of your country), it might be unintentional, but there's a good chance that you'll simply know that the king is telling you what you want to hear and not actually fixing problems. On some level, the king knows this too, but he might not always have a choice . . . but that makes it increasingly hard to shield you from mindbreak, which is basically game over, man. Game over!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is called tension. It takes a premise, extrapolates it out for a few logical steps, and causes it to give rise to a fertile breeding ground for conflict. Stories told against this backdrop have many ways of proceeding, and they always have ways of causing conflict and struggle. You might have enemy operatives engaging in the dangerous business of trying to intentionally induce mindbreak in the royal seers of their enemies. You might have a callous and greedy courtier who seeks to use the seer's stress levels as leverage to get what he wants. Whatever! But the point is, you'd have SOMETHING.

And that's a way that some premises laid forth in Dominic Deegan could be used in a better story.

Assuming, of course, a lack of professional therapists. Although in the situation you're proposing, they'd be hard-pressed to stay on top of it all.

Originally Posted by Zap Dynamic

I want to create a world that is full of possibility, and one of the best ways to handle it is by creating a bunch of stories that haven't yet been finished.

Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c

At this point, however, I'm thinking way too hard about the practical problems of running a battle royale school for Russian assassins, so I think I'll leave it there.

In my posts, smilies generally correspond to my expression at the time. As an example, means "huh?" and "Hmm..". Also, "Landis" is fine.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

I would presume mind break just means the seer snaps and becomes a psychopath. With that, they also stop inhibiting their own seer ability, which they have previously always done to some extent by filtering out all the options which are not least bad outcomes. Instead they spend their time using their newfound perverted nihilism and omiscience to realize the worst possible outcomes for the world, in all possible requests, including for themselves. Maybe.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

You're both wrong! Mindbreak is when everyone gets visions, instead of just seers. It is interesting to note that the effect of constantly receiving visions is "irrevocable insanity".
On the other hand, when Dom checked his own future, he did not appear to enter mindbreak, so much as turned into some sort of furnace, I guess.

Basically seers are incredibly dangerous, and the setting never really reconciles this with their cavalier treatment. Sometimes they just throw seers down flights of stairs.

Cryptic warnings, laserbeam duels that incinerate half a town, cities wiping themselves off the map as all their inhabitants go berserk because one guy couldn't get his candy, castles appearing in the sky, some things you just accept.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Originally Posted by Mr. McGician

Decent filler. Has to do with the both the plot and Halloween.

I wonder if it's the other way around.

Did Rillian's unmasking have an actual purpose and just happened to be right before Halloween, or did things in real life just enter the comic again and the entire reason we saw "Brian" was because of Halloween?

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

I got a stupid question (Catching up on my webcomics from the past few days)...but when the hell did Dominic ever known that Brian and Rilian were the same person? How is this supposed to help anything when information being presented was never....oh to hell with it, he's gonna just asspull exposition and backstory out of his ass anyway.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Originally Posted by TwilightsBard

I got a stupid question (Catching up on my webcomics from the past few days)...but when the hell did Dominic ever known that Brian and Rilian were the same person? How is this supposed to help anything when information being presented was never....oh to hell with it, he's gonna just asspull exposition and backstory out of his ass anyway.

I don't think Dominic knows at this point; He's probably just reacting with surprise to Rilan taking on an old friend's face out of nowhere (Granted, Dominic befriend Brian was somewhat... odd, but that's another issue).

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

- Certainly supports my theory that the entire "Brian" moment here was only because of Halloween, and did not have any other purpose or meaning.

"You're Brian?! But of course you are, let's just go on with the plot"
Issue resolved in one panel, that's a new record, isn't it?

- Will there ever be an actual plan on HOW to get back the necklace (not to mention how to keep it safe)?
So far, the plans of "I'll get captured" and "I'll just wait for the right time" don't seem to be working.

- And of course, just yesterday (not including the filler), Dominic was in a bad shape.
Nothing like "I'm actually someone else you met a year ago", and "you're dying" to calm people down.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

"It's because we're dying."

Oh gee, if Rillian had never pointed that I wouldnt have guessed. There's plenty of ways to make Dominic look like he's about to cack it, he could look emaciated, or almost falling apart from blight, or bleeding from every orifice, anything except looking "exhuasted".

Ugh, is it worth getting all riled up from all this telling? It's pretty much all Mookie can do nowadays.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Originally Posted by Humbug

Ugh, is it worth getting all riled up from all this telling? It's pretty much all Mookie can do nowadays.

I'm finding that part hilarious, because it's obvious Mookie is trying to make us go all "Oh no Dominic is dying! " but is instead only making me concerned for Rilian. I can't feel sympathy for Dominic because he's only in this prediciment because he didn't do a damn thing to prevent it.

Re: Dominic Deegan, Mk. XLVII: A Flat World From Recycled Scrap

Originally Posted by Zaq

Ways in which Dominic Deegan could be better, #1,802:

Spoiler

Show

Start with the premise of mindbreak. If a sufficiently powerful seer becomes too stressed and overwhelmed for an extended period of time, they suffer mindbreak, which I think we can effectively call a magical Chernobyl, or at least on par with a major earthquake. It's a disaster, and one far-reaching in its destruction. Fine. Let us declare that this is an actual concern, because Mookie isn't writing this, so it won't be immediately forgotten.

Obviously, it is in the best interest of those in power (and those around them) to prevent mindbreak at all costs, since it's bad, bad news. If a king, for example, has a royal seer (and why wouldn't he? In a universe where such people exist, NOT having one would be a major political and strategic weakness), it is in that king's best interest to make very sure that said seer doesn't experience the stress and trauma that eventually leads to mindbreak. We have to assume that mindbreak isn't extremely common, or else it would be happening left and right, but it has to be a nontrivial concern. Every seer knows that mindbreak is real, and while it might only happen to 1% of the seers out there (or even 0.1%), it's still a problem. So, the king wants to make sure that his powerful seers don't get too stressed out or too overwhelmed.

Unfortunately, these are seers. Royal seers. Their jobs aren't to just scry adorable children saying the darnedest things for His Highness's amusement. Their jobs are to foresee disasters. Wars, earthquakes and other natural disasters, villainy from eldritch horrors and unscrupulous sorcerers, epidemic diseases magical and natural, and so on. If a king asks his seer what the likely outcome of invading a nearby country would be, the seer isn't going to just see a history textbook saying "in this year, Country A invaded Country B, expanding their territory but making a political enemy in the process." The seer is going to see bloody battles and destruction, loss of innocent lives, and the unrest that follows, as well as the glorious and politically important parts. That's . . . not easy to deal with on a regular basis. Furthermore, seers often have visions of upcoming important (usually dangerous or at least threatening) events . . . think about the start of every DD arc ever. Even when not instructed to investigate things, seers who care about anything at all are subject to this sort of thing.

These things are stressful. Being a royal seer would be a very stressful job. Your job would be to see horrible things (bidden and unbidden), and then to deal with the political and bureaucratic situation necessary to do something about them. (Remember, Mookie isn't writing this, so royal seers aren't Dominic, and they won't automatically have an answer for everything just because.) If the seer isn't basically also the king (which they aren't in this situation), there's going to be at least a low-level Cassandra complex going on, in which you'd feel like nobody is taking your warnings seriously, and that both makes you look bad and puts your country in danger. You'd also be painfully aware of all the intrigue going on around you . . . all the assassination plots (character and bodily), all the smear campaigns, all the backroom deals, and so on. Being part of that game (you didn't get to be a royal seer for nothing, of course), you wouldn't be able to just expose it all without getting thrown under several buses, but you're aware that nobody really trusts you, because you probably have something on them. You might see their assassins coming, but they're still coming.

The point is, it's a stressful job. Endlessly stressful. There'd be constant background stress, and there'd be spikes of traumatic visions both bidden and unbidden. (Not every vision is going to be a major problem, of course, but enough of them are.) And you know that mindbreak is a real thing. And so does the king.

The king, not being a total idiot (Mookie's not writing), is going to want to insulate you, the royal seer, from any more stress than necessary. But of course, you're a seer. It's very hard to hide things from you. It's extremely hard to lie to you. Any steps taken to make you easier to hide things from are steps that make you less able to do your job and see, for example, the assassins plotting against the king. And if you report that a dragon is about to awaken and rampage through one of your kingdom's smaller cities, and the king assures you that he's sending troops to deal with that even though most of the army is tied up in the war with your neighbor, you're going to know if that doesn't happen. It might be intentional (you DO, presumably, care about the people of your country), it might be unintentional, but there's a good chance that you'll simply know that the king is telling you what you want to hear and not actually fixing problems. On some level, the king knows this too, but he might not always have a choice . . . but that makes it increasingly hard to shield you from mindbreak, which is basically game over, man. Game over!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is called tension. It takes a premise, extrapolates it out for a few logical steps, and causes it to give rise to a fertile breeding ground for conflict. Stories told against this backdrop have many ways of proceeding, and they always have ways of causing conflict and struggle. You might have enemy operatives engaging in the dangerous business of trying to intentionally induce mindbreak in the royal seers of their enemies. You might have a callous and greedy courtier who seeks to use the seer's stress levels as leverage to get what he wants. Whatever! But the point is, you'd have SOMETHING.

And that's a way that some premises laid forth in Dominic Deegan could be used in a better story.

I don't think, with the system as we know it, an intelligent government/monarch would limit themselves to only one royal seer. Like you said, the royal seer would be under a lot of stress. The best way to alleviate that stress would be to just not put them under that stress in the first place, instead putting it on someone else. Multiple seers allows you to split up the workload and the stress between them, but presents some risk in the form of having not just one seer who could 'go nova' at any given moment. There are two ways I could see this manifesting: putting all the seers in one place or keeping them scattered about.

Keeping the seers together means you have an easier time keeping them happy, keeping them 'sharp' (allowing them to teach one another) and keeping them working together towards the same goals. On the other hand, if any of them Mindbreak, you're going to lose a lot of them in the process and 'working together towards the same goals' doesn't always mean your goals; basing most of your political decisions on what they say gives them a lot of political power and, unless they like you a lot, they could just take over.

Keeping the seers spread out, on the other hand, keeps you in control of everything and cuts down on losses of seers. However, you'll have a harder time keeping them all happy (since you can't ship exotic luxury goods to every corner of the kingdom for them, only money), a harder time protecting them and a harder time making sure there's no corruption.

Personally, I'd lean towards the latter. Keeps me in power at the cost of maybe a few innocents if one of them goes berserk. Would need to have check ups on seers pretty regularly just to double check on them and how they're doing.